Hidden Humanity
by Artificial Intel
Summary: A story where Shadow is stuck deciding whether to be the hero or the villain. "Should I become the weapon of mass destruction I was created to be...or play the nice-guy hero like Faker?" And in this story, he may not have the choice. AU-ish.


**Disclaimer: Don't own it. Oh well.**

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><p>Lies.<p>

All of it.

Everything he thought was real or true was all _fake_.

Fraud.

Everything was a carefully constructed lie.

It. Was. All. **FAKE**.

Shadow the Hedgehog, formerly amnesic anti-hero and occasional protector of the Earth, paced angrily back and forth inside of the old space station. After combing the entire station, he finally found something to act as a catalyst for his lost memories. Pictures, documents, files were strewn about the room in an unorganized manner as he went through one folder and then went to tear through another. His muscles were tense with suppressed rage and his eyes were liquid flames of fury and hate. One particular document lay ripped to shreds on the floor near the desk. It was a letter from the Commander, at the time, of Guardians of United Nations, Anthony Hawk, sent to Gerald Robotnik questioning his mental capacity and ability to perform well in crowded environment. Basically he was asking if he acted like the ticking time bomb he was created to be.

But that wasn't all of it.

Then, another section of the letter, this part written by the President himself, demanded that his memories be shut down within twenty-four hours of the Ark's disabling. After that, everything that was supposed to happen was written out. The doctor and Maria supposedly die and he is sent down to Earth with no memories. Shadow guessed they hadn't counted on him being able to relive the memory of Maria's grisly death. But now, reading these documents and seeing the pictures, he remembered everything. They had been planning to "hero-ize" him from the start. Instead of him being an android with a powerful self-destruct device, they wanted him to be a superhero; in the case the planet needed one.

Growling furiously, Shadow shredded the paper he was reading and began to storm out of the office, absentmindedly walking around the machinery used to protect the room he came from. He made it to the main viewing platform and stopped right in front of the window, scowling down at the blue-green planet. _They're all pathetic...None of them are exempt from my anger. Not the supposed _dead_ Gerald...and not that damn Maria either. _He began pacing again as he stared at the green emerald he always carried around that rested on one of the many control panels. _I'm supposed to be the Ultimate Life Form; the "deadliest weapon ever created". Not some goddamn_ _**superhero**__ hedgehog trying to pretend like I don't have an blood cells that can self destruct running through my veins._

He walked over and picked up the emerald, tossing it up in the air a few times before chuckling sinisterly. "Should I become the weapon of mass destruction I was created to be...or play the nice-guy hero like Faker?" he mused caustically, eyeing the Earth critically. "I could blow this waste of energy into micro-dust...or I could _protect it from whatever evil comes to harm it_." His voice was a tad higher to dismissively mock the blue blur's words.

"If that idiot, Eggman actually used his brain instead of his ridiculous ego, Faker would most likely be dead. But instead, he gave him so many chances to run away or foil his plans..." Shadow stopped, realizing he was basically ranting now. Chuckling again, he pocketed the emerald in his pants pocket and crossed his arms. "Time to pay the good doctor a visit."

The black hedgehog was gone from sight in an instant with no trace of where he'd been standing. With many years of practice, his transportation technique no longer produced that obscene green flash that gave away his location. No, he'd gotten much, _much_ stealthier than that.

Hundreds of miles down on Earth, he reappeared outside of Eggman's main base where he would retreat after an embarrassing defeat or sneak away to work on another one of his grand schemes to "get rid of that horrid little hedgehog". Shadow tsked quietly at the level of security the place had after hacking the security devices at the front door and walking down the corridor. _Just because you're in a remote location, Doctor, does not mean you cannot be found or caught_, Shadow snickered to himself. Eventually, he reached the high point of the tower, the control room/observatory where the doctor was sitting at one of the desk, working on something. Shadow vaguely noticed the doctor had gotten slimmer over the years but for the most part, retained his egg-like shape. Instead of his usual outfit, Eggman was dressed in a red shirt, black sweatpants, and a white lab coat.

Shadow walked behind the doctor and leaned over slightly to see what was being worked on. It was plans for an amusement park that was actually interconnected, captured planets kind of meshed into one. It would be powered by Hyper-Go-On power produced by strange aliens called Wisps. He resisted the urge to snicker at the ridiculously of the plan and instead cleared his throat. Loudly.

"Interesting idea you have there, Doctor. Going for the _kill them with kindness _approach?" he questioned and chuckled quietly when Eggman fell back out of his chair in surprise, sending paper and documents flying everywhere. After righting himself, Eggman sat back in his chair.

"What do you want, Shadow? I'm busy here." Eggman said, gesturing to his work laid out on the desk. Shadow scowled, picking up one of the papers and studying it with a disappointed look.

"Yes, busy creating plans that will fail against him." he retorted and placed the paper down. "I'm actually here to talk to you about something _important_, Doctor." Eggman stilled slightly when Shadow's voice took on its threating, I-don't-play-around tone.

"Important how?"

"Important how I've been lied to ever since I was created."

"You...You know about it?" Eggman stammered and dared himself to glance at Shadow, only to find the black hedgehog glaring furiously ahead with unmasked anger flaring through his blood-red irises.

Shadow barked out a laugh. Short, cold, and humorless. "Know about it? I read almost every damn document in that office with all of them saying the same thing. They feared my sanity and its tie to my power so they ordered my memories to be erased and for me to be sent to Earth. They wanted me to grow up like you lowly humans...They're dead aren't they? Maria and her grandfather."

Eggman paused before answering, knowing that was always a sore topic for the black hedgehog. "Yes. Grandfather passed from old age and Maria died in a car accident a little after him." To his surprise, Shadow laughed cruelly; a sound that made him want to curl up and hide.

"Good. If they weren't I would've shot them myself." he said and stood up straight from his position of leaning against Eggman's worktable. "Well, thank you for the confirmation, Doctor. We might see each other again." With narrowed eyes, Shadow glared at Eggman before walking towards the door. "But I'd watch my back...You are not in the clear either. Everyone is a target until otherwise."

Eggman watched as the black hedgehog continue to walk to the door before disappearing in the doorway. He let out the breath he was holding and sighed. Glancing at the amusement park blueprint, he balled it up and threw it away, recalling Shadow's earlier words. He needed to think outside the box he usually thought out of and then think out of the box that Sonic used to outsmart his plans.

Eggman groaned, pulling the ends of his mustache. This was going to be harder than he thought.

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><p>Another good thousand miles away in the temple where the Master Emerald lay guarded, its guardian shot up from his seat against one of the pillars, eyes wide. Knuckles took deep breaths and tried to calm himself from a most realistic dream. After getting his heartbeat to slow to a normal rate, he stood and walked over to the giant gem. It sparkled its casual viridian glow before a spark of intense pain shot through Knuckles. He shouted out, though no one could hear him, and fell to his knees, clutching his head.<p>

The second he closed his eyes to try to block out the pain, noises erupted all around him. Multiple conversations surrounded him in millions of different languages as the red echidna struggled to focus. If he opened his eyes to look around him, Knuckles would've noticed that he was sitting in an empty room with blank walls and no exits. Finally the conversations and chaos dimmed down to a single one where the guardian opened his eyes, panting heavily. With a pained grunt, he lay on his back and stared up. Only then did his insides freeze as he watched the scene play out in front of him. "What in the...?"

_The area the scene took place in looked dark and its look gave Knuckles a chilled feeling. The blackened ground was split and cracked, revealing red-orange veins of magma that seemed to pulse like a living being's heart. The sky was opaque with clouds that allowed streaks of blue lightning to shoot down every once and a while as thunder rumbled in the background. The scene then moved as if it was viewed out of someone's eyes to two figures in the distance. Around them, lay the bodies of his friends but Knuckles couldn't shout out for them to awake since his voice seemed to leave him._

_The scene moved closer to the individuals and upon closer inspection, it appeared to be Shadow the Hedgehog and someone else he faintly recognized. They were both fairly injured and Knuckles noticed that Shadow seemed to be holding his heart as if he were in pain, holding his body up with his other arm. That's when the sound of the conversation drifted towards him._

_"IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?" Shadow's opponent roared furiously. Shadow's eyes were strained and bloodshot, fire identical to the magma around him running through his eyes as he glared silently. "Everything's gone...ALL OF IT! All because of your selfish desires!"_

_Shadow was quick to retort. "My desires were far from selfish...I was not the only one that wanted to bring her back!" Vaguely, Knuckles wondered if the black hedgehog was speaking about his dead sister-like friend, Maria Robotnik._

_His adversary's soulless dandelion eyes widened. "That is true, Shadow the Hedgehog...But it was **your **fault she was dead in the first place! If you hadn't interfered with her life, she would be **alive**!"_

Then, as soon as it started, the scene was cut short like a movie being paused. Then, it flickered out of existence in a flash of golden light. Knuckles, momentarily stunned, shut his eyes and kept them closed until bright spots stopped dancing behind his eyelids. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on the floor of the temple next to the Master Emerald. "What the...Where did...What just happened?" he questioned aloud while wiping the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.

Something within his mind gave him the feeling that he'd either seen something, a foreboding omen maybe, or, while he was asleep, he snorted some foreign leaves and saw a hallucination because of it. He grinned at the little joke but the slight comic relief soon faded when the reality of the situation hit him hard. He _was _a direct descendant of the Emerald Guardians so it might've been natural for them to have premonitions like this. Panic filled his veins as he started pacing back and forth, pulling his hair.

What did it mean?

Where were they?

How was Shadow even alive?

Who had died?

Amy?

Rouge?

Cream?

_Who the hell was it?_

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><p>In another location far from the mystical temple and its confused guardian, another scene was taking place. On this side of the earth, it was night out and the location was most definitely a forest; that much was known from the nocturnal animals that decided to make themselves known with unique sounds. Under the cover of the cloud-covered moon, two people sat in the middle of a clearing. Sipping mango juice of all things.<p>

One hedgehog was much taller and older than the other with dull but light gray fur, decorated with black tribal markings and storm gray eyes. He was a male with obvious muscles that bulged under his shirt and a blank look on his face. The other hedgehog looked to be way younger and was a girl with pale mint green fur and matching eyes. She was small and looked extremely fragile with black shorts and a mint green shirt on, her shoes a pair of average sneakers.

The red hedgehog watched as his companion made a face while sipping her juice. The one she usually made when she had a million things running through her mind and found a thought that was particulary interesting. She looked up at him with inquisitive eyes and didn't falter when he let out a sigh. _Here we go._

"Say, Sterling? Did you take steroids to get those muscles? Because they don't look like you got them by training like you said you did." she questioned and he ran a patient hand through his hair.

"Those human drugs will not work on me, Ariel."

"Really? So they _are _real!"

Sterling sighed. He was used to Ariel's meaningless but humorous questions by now. His friend was unique in her own way. Revered and feared across the lands for certain reasons even _he_ did not know. But none of them knew how Ariel really acted. She was really a little curious kid that wanted to know more about every and anything.

It was a shame how their life couldn't be this simple. Sitting under the moon, sipping mango juice and talking about trivial things. But a far greater power controlled their life and now it was their turn to be the sacrificial pawns.

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><p>'Ello! So...good or bad? Lemme know by pressing the blue underlined words next to the speech bubble that read "Review this Chapter". Come on! This fic is just screaming for some feedback! And those two characters that popped up at the end, Sterling and Ariel, they will not be Mary Sues or whatever those things everybody hates. They may be Original Characters but they're actually tied with the story-line. So do not fret my pets! :3 Oh, and thank the Sonic Wiki for the stuff I didn't make up. :p Until next time.<p>

_Deuces, ciao, and all that shit. A.I. is out. :3_


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